With fall comes the desire for hearty dishes, homey flavors, and the comfort of terroir and tradition. But some encounters with tradition are not always as reassuring as one might expect.

I set out in search of the true Coq au Vin in a self-righteous frame of mind. I’d just spent two years studying classic French cuisine and had grown fairly right-wing, culinarily speaking. I was determined to find an old recipe to prove there's no point in looking beyond tradition when we want things done right.

I called two fine, by-the-book, home cooks I know in the Auvergne, Léon and Gigi. These are the kind of people who still think a normal, weeknight dinner can consist of chicken liver mousse, daube of lamb, at least five cheeses, and pears poached in red wine. I said, “Coq au Vin. What's the real thing?” Gigi, of course, was adamant. “Blood,” she said.” You need a full-grown cock, not a chicken. You need his blood, not flour. And you need a week, not a day.”

This satisfied me completely. I wanted the romance of all that effort. I wanted confirmation that I'd been right to dismiss those unmarinated, hour-and-a-half Coq au Vins I'd tried in the past. “Good,” I said. “I'm coming down and you can show me how to do it.”

Never mind that it was the middle of July. The only real disadvantage at that time of year, apart from our appetites being somewhat shrunken by the sun, was that the only ready cock to be found in the entire Auvergne was practically walking with a cane, all the others were far too young. Gigi secured him nonetheless, with a farmer, and on a sweltering Saturday afternoon we all piled into the car and went zooming into the hills to fetch him.

Now, the process of a true Coq au Vin is a long and loving one. On the first day the bird is cut into pieces and put to bathe in a marinade of market-fresh carrots, pearl onions, garlic, thyme, parsley, bay leaves, a nip of Cognac, and no less than three hearty bottles of red wine (Gigi swears by 13% alcohol). Then he's left to soak up the goodness of those flavors, to emerge three days later, as if from a spa, with some of the long-lost suppleness and tenderness of youth restored to his limbs.

It was Wednesday before we cooked him, and by this time I was well into the rhythms of the dish, as was he. I had no doubt that this would be a Coq au Vin unlike any I'd ever tasted. Bacon strips were fried, vegetables fished from the marinade and sautéed. We browned the wine-purpled chicken pieces in sizzling butter and set the whole shebang alight with more Cognac. Then, we returned the marinade, covered the pot, and simmered it for two hours until the coq's meat fell from the bone.

You'd think, after all that, we could have had at least a wee taste. But Gigi shooed us out of the kitchen insisting that the Coq au Vin would be inedible unless we reheated and cooled it down at least two more times. Besides, there were still sautéed mushrooms to add and, of course, the blood. The moment I'd been waiting for all week. I watched the dish darken as the blood was poured in. As it boiled, the deep brown sauce grew thick, and the dish took on its final splendid form. It was a magical moment. I felt as timeless as the recipe itself, caught up in a cycle of manners and movements that are cooking, in that instinct and apprenticeship that link one age to the next.

For one final day, the Coq au Vin infused, and I went off to bed as if on the night before Christmas. The build-up had been momentous. The care and attention that bird received for a full week was unlike anything I'd seen before in cooking. Not a single, modern-day, short-cut had been taken: every ancient step had been followed attentively, every ingredient selected with care.

Finally, on the night of feasting, guests arrived sniffing, primed with curiosity and excitement. We reheated the Coq au Vin. We boiled potatoes. We uncorked fine bottles of wine. We basked in the steam of the dish as Gigi proudly served it. And then, in utter silence, we tasted. We tasted again. We continued to eat, slowly and reverently. No one breathed a word, but we were thinking them: this was the worst, metallic, throat-arresting thing we’d ever forced past our front teeth.

What I didn't know, and what the French guests didn't know (or had forgotten), is that an old cock, even after a week in his cups, is an old cock. And the blood! Well, they probably hadn't had a blood-thickened Coq au Vin since the 1950s, and they'd lost the taste for it, if ever they'd truly had it. I could have hung my tongue on a cloth's line, because all I could taste for the next two days was...tradition?

I left disappointed, almost ashamed. I didn’t want to admit it. How could a traditional dish let me down when I thought nothing on earth was more reliable than that? How could I not have appreciated a true classic?

But cold weather is coming around again, changing the air and my appetite. I'm rethinking the experience. All things are right in their own time, like carriages, and carrier pigeons, and chimney sweeps. Our tastes, too, are right for our own time. Maybe I don't need to be sorry for not liking that Coq au Vin. And, maybe updated traditions shouldn't have to apologize for themselves either.

Laura Calder is the author of French Food at Home (HarperCollins, 2003).